I’m just writing a quick post today to show a card I’ve made for the Freshly Made Sketches challenge that will be closing soon, as well as the current AAA Cards challenge. The two challenges worked together so well that I couldn’t resist joining in them.

I thought it would be cute to have animals peeking through round windows. I created the front panel of the card first by adding a strip of light green cardstock to the bottom of a 4.25″ x 5.5″ piece of white cardstock and adding a sentiment. Why green? Because it was a scrap that was lying on my desk, and because it seemed like it would work as a “ground” or “grass”. And because I used a scrap, I’m going to enter this into the Shopping Our Stash challenge, too. Then I used my circle dies to cut the circles from the panel. I laid the die cut panel over a white card base and traced the outlines of the circles so I’d know where to position the animals. After I stamped them, I colored them with colored pencils blended with odorless mineral spirits. The colored pencils tend to give a softer look than my Copic markers do, plus the pencils don’t bleed through the cardstock like Copics often do. Once I was done coloring, I attached the die cut panel to the card base. I think it turned out pretty well, considering I was running out of the odorless mineral spirits!

And there’s another any occasion card for the stockpile I’m creating for Send a Smile 4 Kids. Thanks for stopping by today! Comments are always welcome and appreciated.

Hello! It’s time for another month of challenges at CAS Colours & Sketches! We have some bold, bright colors for our challenge this week.

I really didn’t want to use the turquoise and the pink with the green to create a floral scene; that seemed a little too typical. But I wasn’t sure how to merge the colors into a more graphic design. My eyes caught a stamp set with a number of bird images and I thought that would work – plus, it fits the current theme over at Shopping Our Stash. I’ve used the layout from this week’s Freshly Made Sketches challenge. I debated whether or not to use a background stamp on the pink card base and I finally decided against it, because I didn’t want to take away from the CAS-ness of the card.

As always, although Stampin’ Up color names are used to describe the colors, you do not need to use SU products to create your card for the challenge. Just use whatever product you have that is closest. For all the details of this challenge, please check out the blog at CAS Colours & Sketches. I hope you’ll join us! Thanks for stopping by today.

It’s a busy time of year, but we’re squeezing in one more challenge at Cards in Envy for the next two weeks. This time our theme is “Let it Snow”. Any images depicting snow, snowflakes, snowmen, etc. are suitable for the challenge. Just remember to keep your card A2 sized (4.25″ x 5.5″) and flat enough to be mailed at the regular first-class postage rate.

I have to confess that I was running short on time before I needed to present my design team sample, so instead of making a card with a big snowy scene like I really wanted to do, I’ve simply used the Christmas card that my family is sending out this year… which, I must admit, is a revisit of a card I made earlier this year. I’ve made a few changes, mainly to the color scheme. This time I’ve heat embossed the sentiment in silver to coordinate with the silver snowflake eyelet. I’m sharing two photos here; the second one does a little better job of showing the silver shimmer mist that I sprayed on the ivory layer. In real life, when the light catches it just right, it really glistens.

I actually did the Christmas cards in two different shades of blue because I didn’t have quite enough of each color to make all of the card bases I needed. On the bright side, I did not need to buy any new materials right before Christmas to make the cards this year! And it felt good to use a lot of those snowflake eyelets – I’ve had them for a very long time!

Shopping Our Stash also has the “Let it Snow” theme going on, so I’m going to enter this card into their challenge.

The Cards in Envy team has come up with some other great snowy ideas, so be sure to check them out! We hope you’ll share your own snowy card with us before the challenge closes. You have until 7:00 p.m. Eastern time Sunday, January 3, 2016 to link your card at the challenge post. Thanks for stopping by today!

Hello! October has given us a fifth Thursday, which means it’s Double Challenge time at CAS Colours & Sketches! This week we have a sketch and a color combination for you to use together in creating a clean and simple styled card.

The sketch was drawn up to create a square card, but I’ve stretched it out into a portrait-oriented rectangle. I’m not sure why I was compelled to use snowflakes for my card, since the colors aren’t typical snowflake-y colors, but I decided to go with it anyway. I chose the lightest two of the colors to create a polished stone piece of glossy cardstock and die cut the snowflakes from it. An embossing folder was used to give the vertical strip some more snowflake-y interest. I backed it with the third color from the challenge graphic and used that color for my card base. A kind of generic sentiment makes this a wintry any occasion card. The rhinestones were literally last minute decisions. I was all set up to take the photo of the card but felt it was missing something, so I went back to my desk with it and added the sparkle. I’m glad I did.

The current challenge at Shopping Our Stash is to not use patterned paper, so I’m entering this card there. Time Out Challenges has the theme of Christmas with a twist of using pink or purple, so I’m hoping this card is Christmassy enough to count for that.

Thanks for stopping by today! Be sure to see what the other CAS Colours & Sketches design team members have made. Then show us what you can create with the colors and the sketch! You have until 6:00 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, November 4 to link your work to the challenge post.

Hello! This week at CAS Colours & Sketches we have another color challenge for you. This time we have some great colors from nature, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what our challenge participants do with them.

My card combines the color challenge with several other challenges. The layout for my card is taken from the CAS(E) this Sketch! challenge that will be closing later this morning. I don’t have any alien/outer space stamps that fit the theme for the current Shopping Our Stash challenge, but I thought this monster stamp worked well with the colors. Aliens could be monsters, right? The monster stamp is an oldie but goodie from a set I bought about five years ago. The background stamp is even older than that. I used it here to stamp a background for the monster, forming a gradient with the greens, making this card eligible for the current Retro Rubber challenge. I used dimensional adhesive to pop up the monster over the background. The sentiment comes from the same stamp set as the monster image.

Be sure to check out what the rest of the CC&S Design Team has done with these colors! Then share your own card with us by linking it to the challenge post by 6:00 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, September 23. We’d love to have you join us!

Hello! The year is passing by quickly! Can you believe there are less than 4 months until Christmas? If you’ve been participating in our challenges at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown, you should have a nice supply of Christmas cards on hand ready to use for the upcoming season.

Our challenges this month start off with a sketch challenge. As always, you’re welcome to turn the sketch on its side or manipulate it into a square. So long as the basic shapes of the sketch are easily recognizable in your card, it’s all good. For my card, I’ve stayed pretty true to how the sketch was drawn. It’s a good one for using some designer papers! The biggest change I made to the sketch was substituting a bow for the snowflake embellishment. In real life, the color of the bow matches the red ink and cardstock better than it shows in the photo. I opted not to put a sentiment on the card so it could be used any time throughout winter, and not specifically for Christmas.

Go see what the rest of the 52CCT design team has done with this sketch, and then show us your own take on it! We’d love to have you share your card at the 52CCT site. The challenge deadline is 7:00 p.m. Eastern time Friday, September 11. Please join in the fun and creativity!

Hello! Here’s a reasonably quick card I made this morning combining a few challenges. The Retro Rubber challenge has a numbers theme, so that gave me the perfect reason to use this designer paper that I’ve had for a while. I’ve had the stamp set with this sentiment for about 18 months now. I like reading this sentiment with emphasis on the word “how”, as in, “You’re HOW old?” said with a lot of snarky disbelief – so that ties in with the Shopping Our Stash and Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers challenges. The layout for this card is from Freshly Made Sketches. It’s hard to see in the photo, but the yellow panel behind the sentiment is dry embossed for a little bit of texture and visual interest.

(I don’t know why the background on the FMS graphic turned black. Their graphics have been doing for me that the last few weeks. They used to be white. Call me confuzzled.)

Thanks for stopping by today! All comments are read and appreciated – well, the spam ones aren’t so appreciated, but I actually do read them too.

Edited on August 17, 2015 to add: Thank you to the Retro Rubber Design Team for choosing my card as one of their Fab Five!

Hello! It’s the first of the month, and that means we have a new challenge host at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown and a new sketch challenge for you. Julie is our hostess this month, and she’s come up with a sketch that can be kept pretty simple or dressed up with matted layers.

I decided to go the matted layers route with the sketch, and I stretched it out into a rectangle. The current challenge at Shopping Our Stash is to use bling, so that helped me choose this image that can easily be blinged up with sparkly ornaments. I made one goof and didn’t measure correctly when I cut the image panel to size, so it’s not centered vertically as well as I’d like, but since I’d already colored the image I went with it anyway. Oh well. At least it was nice to use some of this designer paper that I’ve had for several years, as well as some of the larger red rhinestones that I own. I’m also including this card in the “Christmas in July 4 Kids” challenge at Send a Smile 4 Kids.

Go see what the rest of the 52CCT design team has done with this sketch, and then show us your own take on it! We’d love to have you link your card at the 52CCT site. The challenge deadline is 7:00 p.m. Eastern time Friday, August 7. Please join in the fun and creativity!

Hello! It’s the third Thursday of the month, which means it’s color challenge time again at CAS Colours & Sketches. Once again, Lizy has selected a color combo using some of Stampin’ Up’s newest In Colors. If you don’t have the new colors, it’s OK – just use whatever colors you have that closely match.

Since Father’s Day is coming up this Sunday, that decided the theme of my card this week. The layout of my card is very similar to our CC&S sketch challenge last week, but it’s actually taken from The Crooked Stamper Sketch Challenge. I colored a scrap of watercolor paper with some mustard yellow and rich green ink, let it dry, and die cut the leaves from it. The word “Father’s” on the stamp is an outline image, and I’ve colored it in with a marker to use more of the green in our color challenge. The leaves count as foliage for the current Shopping Our Stash challenge. Since it’s a clean and simple styled card, it also works for the current challenge at Addicted to Stamps and More.

Now it’s your turn to create a clean and simple styled card using these colors, and share it with us at the CC&S site! You have until 6:00 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, June 24 to link your card. We hope you’ll join us!

Hello! It’s the third Monday of the month, which means it’s time for a new challenge at Cards in Envy. This time we have a color challenge for you – “Pretty in Pink”.

I wanted to use the current sketch from CAS(E) this Sketch! for the layout of my card. The vase of flowers in the inspiration photo at Addicted to Stamps and More nudged me in the direction of using pink flowers on my card, and the creamy white table and chairs inspired me to choose ivory for my card base. I looked through my stamp sets to figure out which one to use, and found this one that I hadn’t used for a long time. I thought it might work well with some of my stash of Prima flowers, so I went through them and found these that were just the right size, with the bonus of the darker ones matching the dark pink cardstock perfectly. The rediscovered stamp set and flowers tie into the current Shopping Our Stash challenge. The current challenge at Retro Rubber is to use brads, so I looked through my horde of brads and found these little green ones that would work as the centers of the flowers. So I was able to combine all the challenges together and came up with this:

Now that I’ve completed my card for this challenge, I have the Psychedelic Furs song “Pretty in Pink” running through my head, and I’m tempted to see if I can find the Molly Ringwald movie on Netflix. Ah, the 1980s. Good times!

If you need additional inspiration, please go check out the Cards in Envy site and see what the rest of the design team has made. Then create your own pink card following our challenge guidelines and share it with us on the Cards in Envy site by 7:00 p.m. Eastern time Sunday, May 3. You can make your card for any occasion or theme you like, so long as the dominant color is pink, it’s A2 sized, and that there are no lumpy, bumpy embellishments that would prevent the card from being mailed at the first class postage rate. We’d love to have you play along with us! Thanks for stopping by today.

Edited on April 24, 2015: Thank you to the Addicted to Stamps and More team for naming me as an Honourable Addict for their challenge! What a sweet surprise!

Edited on April 26, 2015: Thank you also to the Retro Rubber Mod Squad for selecting my card as one of their Fab Five! What a happy way for my week to start!

Hello! I realize it seems a little strange to be talking about Christmas on the day before Easter, but really, is it wrong to be in the Christmas spirit of giving and love all year round? I think not.

Since it’s the first Saturday of the month, it’s time for another sketch challenge at 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown. Our challenge hostess for the month of April is Louise, and she’s designed a sketch that’s perfect for using up scraps of designer paper or cardstock. I have a tendency to hang on to all sorts of scraps “just in case I’ll need them sometime” – well, this card was the perfect time to use a lot of the scraps I’d been hoarding from one of my Basic Grey paper pads. I did not cut into any whole sheets of designer paper for this card. (For that matter, even the card base was left over from another card.) I did take the liberty of stretching the sketch out to a rectangle and turning it onto its side. The sentiment from one of my older stamp sets fit nicely in one block. I drew in some faux cross stitching to connect the different designer papers, tying this card into the current Shopping Our Stash challenge. As I was moving some things on my desk earlier this week, I found these dyed Prima flowers that were left over from a card I’d made quite a while back. The color matched nicely for this card, so I decided to add them, attaching them with some brads. The designer papers, the flowers, and the brads all count toward the “hoarded items” for the current Clear it Out challenge.

Go hop over to the 52{C}CT blog to see what the rest of the design team has created. Then get your creative gears going and make your own Christmas or wintry card with this sketch, and share it with us using the linky tool provided at the 52{C}CT site. We’d love to see what you do! Thanks for stopping by today!

Hello! I know, I don’t often post on Sundays, but I wanted to share a card I made last night, combining several online challenges and using some of my older products.

The current Shopping Our Stash challenge theme calls for using numbers in some way, and at Clear It Out they want us to use products that are orange. I remembered that in one of my older Basic Grey paper collections there was a print with numbers all over it, so I got that out, and by good chance, some of the numbers were an orangey color! The current sketch at Freshly Made Sketches has a nice large panel that seemed like a good way to showcase the number print. Another paper in the same Basic Grey collection had a orangey-yellow block pattern, and there was a coordinating more-or-less solid paper (from a distance it looks solid, but up close you can see streaks and color variations in it). The sketch pulled the three papers together nicely. I felt the numbers would work well for a birthday theme, so I stamped a party hat from one of my older Lawn Fawn stamp sets onto a scrap, colored it to coordinate with the papers, fussy cut it, and attached it in the place of the round element on the sketch. I positioned the hat and the banner a bit lower than the way it’s drawn on the sketch to allow that sideways orange 8 to show. (Or maybe it’s supposed to be infinity?) It all came together like this:

So there ya have it. I figure it will be a good any age card to send to Operation Write Home. Although the colors do suggest a boyish or masculine vibe, I think it’s pretty gender neutral. And it felt good to finally cut into that number paper!

Thanks for stopping by today! All comments are read and greatly appreciated. Have a great day!

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